A Beginner’s Guide to Feeling Others's Feelings
by seriousish
Summary: Being with someone who's been a telepath's lover for so long is a new experience for Emma... ScottxEmma, ScottxJean


_It sneaks up on her. That's what it does, it sneaks. Emma falls in love with Scott, deeper and deeper, and by the time he loves her back her self-doubt is enough that she can see Jean's ghost._

It's perfectly obvious. He makes enough pancakes for two because Jean liked pancakes, always forgetting that she could never stomach that concentrated fat. The remainder get shoveled into a zip-lock bag and left in the refrigerator. Moreover, the students all judge her against Jean. Their prerogative, of course, but she can't make a decision without "That isn't the way Miss Grey did it" being painted on the walls.

It's tiresome. 

* * *

The attack came mentally first, crashing against her defenses like a battering ram. She repelled it, started extending her protection to the students. In short order they were in the shelter and the team was fighting back. Her praise was that she performed exactly as well as Jean Grey did.

It's only afterward, when she unthinkingly sips the tea Scott's fixed her, that she came to realize how her headache was fading away. The tea.

"It always helped Jean," Scott said.

But instead of the backwash of happy memories that name usually swelled in him, his focus was entirely on her. He caressed her with beautiful memories and Emma smiled as she took another sip.

"Tell me about her."

Scott's visor flared a little. "Jean?" Backwash.

"When you first met her."

Scott stood, wandering through the car crash aesthetic of their shared room. Jean's image clung to group photos like blackness from a fire, prodding the couple with needles. Emma followed his gaze as it went to the oldest: Jean so innocent, so in love. Emma had never been that young.

"She was like… no one I'd ever met. I know you hate comparisons, but it was like when you joined the X-Men, or when you and I rebuilt… Everything was duty and darkness and control, and she shined a light in. Even the Professor relaxed with her around." He sighed deeply. "I know you think that the others hate you for not being her, but she just left this hole when she died. It's not your fault you can't fill it."

Anger hardened Emma. "I'm not trying."

"You shouldn't," he said, gentle as a lamb. "Hey. If I'd never met her, I'd never have been good enough for you. And me, personally, I think I'm the luckiest guy in the world to have known two women as good as you and Jean."

"That's almost unhealthily salubrious. Are you sure that mind-quake didn't take anything out of you?"

He smiled. "You've been a good influence on me too."

* * *

_People think being a telepath means other people's thoughts invading your mind at all times. And maybe it was that way for someone like Jean Grey, but to a professional like Emma, once you have your blocks in place, the hard part is breaking through to another. Reading's easy, so long as the target doesn't have resistance training. Communication is harder, the target has to filter through their surface thoughts to the thought-speak they want to send and with non-telepaths it's like listening to a bastardized slur of English. _

* * *

When someone who wore the threateningly ludicrous moniker of Mr. Sinister started spouting off about how Emma wasn't genetically compatible with Scott, it was both frightening and the last straw. Bad enough that she got that she wasn't personally compatible with Scott from her so-called colleagues, she didn't need it from such a goddamned undignified excuse for a villain.

It was Scott who helped her weather the indignity, Scott who opened his mind without reservation to show her, warts and all, how he felt for her. There was nothing Essex or anyone could do to change that. Emma brushed her hair out of her eyes and waited until the time was right to show Nathaniel that queens could be so much blacker than phoenixes.

* * *

_Dream delving is always dangerous. Like the sea, dreams can go from tranquil to treacherous without a moment's notice. Here there be monsters. It's the last skill Emma teaches her psychic students, never letting on how elusive it had been for her to master._

* * *

Scott fell asleep with her name on his lips and his mind's door open. Well, she had asked him to tell her what was wrong. Falling asleep, she cast her last sands of consciousness into him.

He was dreaming of her funeral. It made sense. Jean had died on him so many times that he must've expected Emma to uphold her proud tradition. Emma scattered the mourners (more hero than villain, she noted with satisfaction) like dead leaves and made love to Scott on her own grave, burying the White Queen in the earth as he buried himself in her. When they woke up, he changed the sheets.

* * *

_Psychic imprints are left all the time. Sometimes they're called ghosts, but more often they're just feelings, spots where so many felt so much that you can't help but join in. You look at the Statue of Liberty, a sad movie in a crowded theater, music in a packed stadium, and something stirs within you. With proper training, it was possible to deliberately leave an imprint._

In the graveyard, Professor Xavier had endowed each headstone as it was erected. An important part of post-human mourning. The bereaved came together in a circle around it, joined hands, and donated memories to the nexus. After that, all you had to do was touch the grave to let a taste of the love the deceased had known in life wash over you.

* * *

When Jean's birthday rolled around, Scott took her to visit the grave. It was on the mansion grounds, deep in the forest where it couldn't be defaced. The angel of her tomb, wings up like a raptor swooping in for the kill, stood watch over the first mutant graveyard in America.

Scott didn't touch the serene carving of her face, but then he didn't need to.

Emma didn't exactly thank Jean for her part in making Scott the man they'd both loved, but she did leave a single white rose with Scott's bouquet of red. The next visitor Jean had would find a new memory waiting: Jean and Scott, in love, and Emma's happiness for him. Her time would come again, as the inscription lit by eternal flame promised. But not that day.


End file.
